Mapping Yolanda
2012; Emerson College; Volume: 38; Issue: 2-3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/plo.2012.0075
ISSN2162-0903
Autores Tópico(s)American Literature and Culture
ResumoMapping Yolanda Jennifer De Leon (bio) One Friday night, the winter I was twelve, my mom's brother, Tío Erwin, showed up at my grandmother's apartment in Jamaica Plain with his new wife. She was fifteen. They'd met during his recent trip to Guatemala. She looked like any one of my cousins, only she didn't weigh as much. Her smile stretched, revealing teeth so white they looked like they'd glow in the dark. She was short like Tío, and had fluffy, frizzy hair, and her skin was the same color as the outside of a loaf of bread. "This is Yolanda," Tío Erwin said. Underneath the buzzing fluorescent light in my grandmother's kitchen, he draped his arm over his bride's shoulder. They practically purred. When I kissed Yolanda's cheek, I inhaled her scent—a combination of incense and floral perfume. She tickled my chubby middle and giggled when I stood back, startled. My mom tore the lid off a box of Dunkin' Donuts and set the box on the table where my aunts sat, their elbows resting on the green-and-white checkered tablecloth. "Niños," she said. "Váyanse para la sala!" We were banned from the kitchen so the women could get to know Yolanda. The living room was crowded with mustached uncles, including Tío Erwin, and my dad, who said, "M'ija" and pushed his lips toward the kitchen. My daughter, you should go play with your cousins. Kids were forbidden from playing in the bedrooms too, so we were left with the linoleum strip of hallway. We cousins ranged in age from six-year-old David, a fan of Ninja Turtles, to sixteen-year-old Erika with her feathered bangs and Guns N' Roses t-shirts. Unlike most of my cousins, I adored Barbies and Pogo balls and puffy-painted tops. My sisters, parents, and I lived in a neighborhood where the only nighttime sound was a recycle bin rattling down a driveway. My parents agreed that education was important. It was the reason they had left their homeland of Guatemala and, later, had abandoned Boston with its ethnic intimacy. They believed the suburbs meant [End Page 39] security—good schools, organized sports, a library down the street. My mother pushed the idea of college on us before we could write in cursive. We took elective classes in French and read chapter books for fun. Many of my cousins, on the other hand, lived in Section 8 housing and changed schools often. But when we were all together, in the pocket of Friday night, we were the same. We played checkers and compared our favorite scenes in The Goonies. We played Go Fish with a sticky deck of cards. Eventually, we would teach Yolanda how to play too. From where I sat that first night, cross-legged in the hallway next to the kitchen, I could see Yolanda's round face, mischievous grin, and nostrils wide as dimes. My grandmother sat closest to Yolanda, who was eating a Boston Kreme donut. Yolanda wore a long cotton skirt and a Celtics jacket. From my aunts' head nods and thick fingers raised in the air, it seemed someone was making a speech. I leaned closer and snatched what I could: "uno nunca sabe...tiene que cuidarse." One never knows what? You must take care of yourself. They hadn't said be careful. That was something we constantly heard. Be careful riding the scooter, and don't go past the yellow house where the Chinese family lives. Be careful swimming or you might drown like Monica almost did one summer. You must take care of yourself implied a further concern. If you don't take care of yourself, then __________. Whatever filled that blank space, I wouldn't know for years. That spring we celebrated my birthday with a barbecue at Larz Anderson Park. Surrounded by shades of green, my cousins and I were allowed to be as loud as we wanted without downstairs neighbors calling the cops to complain about them spics. I was thirteen, so I was too old to play tag. Instead I sat at...
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